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For four Saturday’s in October, the Waltham Farmers’ Market will move from its current location, a few blocks away, to downtown Moody Street, Waltham’s main shopping venue. The goal, as I understand it, is to promote and invigorate the downtown business district. The plan would encourage downtown retailers to open their own stalls within or nearby the WFM, which many of them did.
To all appearances, the first event was successful. A Farmers’ Market organizer told me that they were seeing more people than they usually get at their regular location. Whether that was due to good advance publicity, or the downtown location, or a synergy with its retail stores, or all of it, nobody was quite sure—yet.
(Incidentally, Moody Street was named after Paul Moody who designed and perfected the first power loom in America. Francis Cabot Lowell installed it, in 1813, in the first integrated textile mill in the country. The building still stands today at the head of Moody Street on the Charles River. The mill and its success gave a kickstart to the American industrial revolution. It is a dramatic and inspiring story.)
